Another entry from the weather is not climate department, this time courtesy of Tom Skilling, WGN-TV meteorologist.
Chicago has its coolest July 8 in 118 years
- By Tom Skilling
- July 9, 2009
For the 12th time this meteorological summer (since June 1), daytime highs failed to reach 70 degrees Wednesday. Only one other year in the past half century has hosted so many sub-70-degree days up to this point in a summer season — 1969, when 14 such days occurred.
Wednesday’s paltry 65-degree high at O’Hare International Airport (an early-May-level temperature and a reading 18 degrees below normal) was also the city’s coolest July 8 high in 118 years — since a 61-degree high on the date in 1891.
Rains on Wednesday were bothersome but generally light in the city, where 0.20 inches fell at Midway Airport. Heavier rains were recorded well west and southwest of Chicago, including an unofficial report of 0.93 inches at DeKalb and 0.60 inches in Pontiac.
Sunshine re-emerges Thursday and should boost temperatures back into the 80s. Southeast winds off Lake Michigan will limit shoreline highs to the mid-and-upper 70s. An isolated thunderstorm may bubble to life in far western sections of the area late in the day
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C’mon Anthony, you know this is just weather and has nothing to do with climate!
REPLY: C’mon Trevor read before you bark. – Anthony
As a native Chicagoan, I can’t help but notice the cold weather. Mid-July and it doesn’t get above 70 degrees.? Yikes.
Of course, there is a huge heat wave in the Texas area, so weather is not climate, but it does make you wonder.
And of course there are those for whom any unusual weather, even this type of cold spell, is evidence of global warming. Double Yikes!
Craig
Interesting story, the rising anomalies on the UAH site which is rising again without dropping before (channel 5) seems to want to imply record cold not happening so much right now, but there’s still a fair bit of it.
Also, we’ve gone a third day with the temps. falling well short of the forecast (if you use the Jabara Airport and more reliable station readings). And the biggest difference for today was clear skies all afternoon, they just stalled at noon and didn’t get much higher the rest of the day.
Also, Intellicast’s forecast map shows some unseasonable chill in store for all of Eastern Canada.
A non-existent Spring in Southern New England – a chilly “summer”…. I sit in a lotus position, breathe deeply through my nose, hold it, then exhale slowly through my mouth, chanting the sacred mantra “Weather is not climate. Weather is not climate. Weather is…..”
Easy there pardner … we’ve had several breaks in this ‘heat wave’ on account of unseasonable rains occurring too, so it hasn’t exactly been one long hot dryspell as we’ve seen in previous years (at least in the NcTX area) …
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This is common. Of course they say this exactly what they expect.
According to forecasting models, we are going to experience a major heat wave in Hungary next week. I am sure this event will be linked to AGW by our media outlets.
In other words, it is almost certain that the oncoming heat wave will be treated as ‘climate’. The cooler than normal and rainy conditions of the past 3-4 weeks were just ‘weather’.
_Jim (17:15:59) : “Easy there pardner … we’ve had several breaks in this ‘heat wave’…”
No breaks, no rain in South Texas. Again it’s triple digits (°F).
Anthony. Have you noticed the MJO has been very unusual this past month or so? Almost retrograde, in a sense. http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/precip/CWlink/daily_mjo_index/mjo_index.html
This seems like a good place to point out that a place’s climate is the long term pattern of the weather. Do you usually have hot/wet summers and cold/snowy winters, or perhaps mild/dry summers and cool/wet winters? World maps, and more precise regional maps, of these patterns have been available for years (see Köppen). When conceptualized in this way, is anyone claiming that the climate where they live has changed in the last fifty years?
Sounds like beautiful weather!
Well if you measure theTemperature at your back door every day, and record it for 100 years, then on any future day, you might expect about one chance in 100 that the temperature that day, will be a new record high; or perhaps a new record low; or a new maximum rainfall, or so on.
So after 100 years you might get 3.65 new record highs each year, and 3.65 new record lows also.
So you just report you new records, and people thing the climate is going one way or the other.
The solution is to just not bother to record the temperature; measure it to see if it is comfortable to go out, and then discard it.
Then you can live happily.
And for Buffalo, the count is 13 days since 1 June that temps failed to at least reach 70°. Interesting weather – wish we had some of that global warming thingie those media types keep drooling about.
Here on Long Island, I have still not run my AC and have not watered my lawn. Neither, not once. I have never before even come close to the July 4th without doing both. It’s July 9th and I’m sitting here in sweatpants (had to change out of my shorts) warming myself with my laptop because I refuse to turn on the heat on general principle.
Incredible.
Mosher: How does MJO affect the short term weather worldwide, what does it do, and how will this affect global temps. for the next few months or so?
I don’t know what effect it has.
Southeast Texas has been under High Pressure for about 6 weeks, much like 1980, when we had numerous days in a row above 100F, The current high temperatures sure look like weather to me. The High Pressure moved away a couple of days ago and we had a much needed rain.
OT but perhaps of interest, a huge wind tubine generator project has been postponed for a few years by Boone Pickens due to poor economics and desire for the State of Texas to build a $4.5 billion transmission line to West Texas
Forecast for San Jose, CA for July 11 … high of 75. We have had quite a pleasant summer here with only a few days over 90.
Adam. Just some casual observations i have made, over the years. Our weather ( Calif.), comes from the west. Evidently, the MJO starts in the Indian Ocean, and propogates Eastward. I can anticipate a change in the weather by watching the Eastward movement, as shown in the charts. Blue tending toward cooler temps and brown/red toward higher temps. Unusual now in that you can see that normally this process peters out once the MJO reaches about 40w. The current MJO has tended toward enhanced convection, in my area, for some, and has been a little unusual in it’s duration and movement, IMHO. I am not an expert on MJO by any means……fm
Chicago, Illinois makes for a good study in the climate change challenge between the CO2 manmade model vs. the natural climate change. Please allow me to explain. The computer models of the CO2 theory predicted both warmer summers and winters for Chicago, but real data does not verify this prediction. Has Chicago, IL measured more 90˚F temperatures during the summers since the 1930’s? NO, the temperatures have shown a downward trend since the 1930’s, opposite of the trend of CO2 levels. This is surprising considering the increasing of both the urban heat island effect and temperature instrument error. Our winters for the last 20 years have not warmed-up, in fact each of the last two winters piled over 60 inches of snow, which both are in our top 10 most ever recorded. In addition, the most recent 18 months set a record for the most amount of precipitation in the last 138 years of weather monitoring. Lots of low rain producing clouds are also increasing our nighttime temperatures. During the same time frame, the solar magnetic output dropped to it’s lowest level ever recorded by satellites, and the incoming cosmic rays penetrating Earth at near record high levels. Putting it all together, it makes for a good endorsement of Dr. Svensmark theory stating that the key amplifier is cosmic rays, and that they have more effect on the climate than manmade CO2. The Sun’s solar magnetic wind protects us from incoming cosmic rays bombarding the rest of the universe. As you read this sentence, about two cosmic rays have gone through your body right now. When the Sun is weak, more cosmic rays get through Earth’s magnetosphere and atmosphere and produce measurable Be–10 & C-14 isotopes. There is direct relationship between 30 years of weather satellites measuring low clouds and cosmic rays: Yes, higher cosmic rays = 14% more low clouds . Why this result? Once the cosmic ray penetrates the lower troposphere, they ionize air molecules and create the perfect cloud nuclei. These cloud nuclei then produce low wet clouds that reflect incoming solar radiation, which then COOLS the Earth. Cooler oceans change the jet stream pattern, which changes the weather globally. In addition, these low wet clouds are so good at precipitation that the higher cirrus clouds that warm the Earth’s atmosphere do not form as often. As this theory predicted due to near record setting cosmic rays levels, 2008 was the single largest drop in global temperatures since 1875. The more I learn about Dr. Svensmark cosmic ray theory, the more I believe that he is on the right track. Thank you Anthony Watts and fellow bloggers for educating me on these matters as I will be most interested the results of the upcoming CERN Cloud experiment. What are your thoughts?
Gary from Chi. Good points. In knowledge of cause and effect, we have just made out the tip of the iceberg, IMHO.
Weather isn’t climate, it’s an integral part of climate.
When it runs out of your 50 year norms and into areas where it was the norm 50 years earlier, then it is a change.
Some places have 150 years or more of records.
When your weather starts acting like it was 100 years ago, when the old settlers were heard to ask “is our climate changing”, it tells you that it has changed before.
Then, the natives were known to have told the settlers of a different clmate that existed before they arrived.
When NCDC digs up evidence of the Columbia River basin going on the dry side for a decade or two in 1800 and again in 1840’s, it tells you of things being far different than they are today.
Makes you appreciate how good we got it now.
Now the quetion is: Where are we?
Are we in today’s climate with an anomaly, or is this a harbinger of change to a different climate?
This happened in the Dayton/Cinci area of Ohio on July 2nd(not 100% on that, maybe 1st or 3rd). Tied the record low high temp. I was actually surprised that they mentioned it on tv.
JFD (18:37:55) : “…a huge wind tu(r)bine generator project has been postponed for a few years by Boone Pickens due to poor economics and desire for the State of Texas to build a $4.5 billion transmission line to West Texas.”
Quoting Pickens: “…transmission issues and the problem with the capital markets make that unfeasible at this point…”
You mean with all those hundreds of billions of Drunken Sailor Stimulus money bouncing around out there, T. Boone can’t scrape together a measly $4.5 billion for his own transmission system? Oh, wait. The spendulus sucked money out of the economy to pay for really important stuff, like climate models. Well, all T. Boone would have done is frittered it away to create wealth or something stupid like that.
Conversely, it’s interesting to observe how arctic sea ice loss has accelerated in the last two months.
To: Gary from Chicagoland (19:04:20) :
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That was just magnificent!
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So then, and it’s been as I’ve always thought: The AGW crowd are proceeding ~entirely~ in a vacuum.
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That is, they are analyzing local (Earth) weather effects without the slightest idea of what might be causing those effects.
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That is not unlike back in the dark ages when you got to blame someone for an illness, merely that they happened to have looked at you strangely, i.e., the ‘evil eye.’
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I will suppose then, we’ll likely witness ‘witchcraft’ trials in the very near future …